Browse companies

Browse Companies

The Companies screen is your organisation's master registry of legal entities inside DPMS. Every piece of compliance work — from Records of Processing Activities and risk assessments to vendor records, tasks, and assets — can be scoped to a specific company. Before that scoping is possible, the companies themselves must exist and be correctly configured. This screen is where you build and maintain that foundation. Data Protection Officers, compliance officers, and IT administrators all come here regularly, either to register new subsidiaries, to set up cross-company consulting relationships, or simply to verify which entities are on record.

How to open it

In the left-hand sidebar, expand the Compliance Settings section and click Companies. The item will be highlighted as the active page.

Permissions required:

• You need at least the company read permission to see the screen at all. Without it, navigating to the page shows an "Access Denied" message instead of the list.
• To click into a company record and view its details, you also need the company edit permission. If you only have read access, the list is visible but rows are not clickable — no error is shown; rows simply do not respond to clicks.
• To create new company records, you additionally need the company create permission. Without it, the Create button is hidden or disabled.

What you see

The main content area is dominated by a data table that lists every company your account can access. Above the table on the right sits the Create button for adding new companies. Directly above the column headers there is a search bar for filtering results as you type.

The table has six columns: Name, Type, Consulting companies, Country, Created at, and Updated at. You can sort the list by clicking the Name, Country, Created at, or Updated at column headers. The Type and Consulting companies columns are informational only and cannot be sorted.

As you scroll down through a long list, additional records load automatically — you never need to click a "next page" button.

Working with this screen

Registering a new company for the first time

When your organisation incorporates a new subsidiary or needs to register an external partner in DPMS, start here.

• Click the Create button in the upper-right corner of the content card. A small dropdown appears — select the option to create a new company. You will be taken to the company creation form.
• Enter the company's legal or display name in the Name field. This is the name that will appear everywhere in DPMS: in the company switcher at the top of the screen, in dropdown menus throughout the platform, and in the Name column of this table. It must be unique and cannot be left blank.
• Open the Country dropdown and select the country where this company is registered. The field looks optional because no value is pre-selected, but it is in fact required. Attempting to save without a country will produce a validation error and the record will not be created.
• If this company has no consulting relationship with other companies (the typical case for a straightforward subsidiary), leave the Consulting companies multi-select field empty.
• Click Save. DPMS creates the record and immediately refreshes the company dropdown that appears in the application header — other users in your organisation can start assigning records to the new entity straight away without refreshing their sessions.

Heads up: If you navigate away mid-form without saving, the new company will not appear in the application-wide company switcher. The switcher only updates after a successful save.

Setting up a consulting company relationship

Sometimes an external privacy consulting firm, or even an internal shared-services team, needs visibility into compliance data belonging to other legal entities in the same DPMS instance. DPMS handles this through a "consulting company" model.

• Find the consulting firm's record in the list. If it does not exist yet, create it first using the steps above.
• Click its row to open the edit form (you need the edit permission for this).
• In the Consulting companies multi-select field, choose one or more of your organisation's entities that this firm will advise.
• As soon as you select at least one company, a yellow information banner appears below the dropdown. This is not an error — it is a confirmation message explaining the access implications: the firm you are editing will become a Consultant and will gain visibility into data belonging to the companies you have selected. Read it carefully, as this configuration has real access-control consequences.
• Click Save to apply the relationship. Back on the Companies list, the consulting firm's row will now show Consultant in the Type column, and the names of the companies it advises will appear in the Consulting companies column.

Tip: The Type column label is calculated automatically — you will not find a "Type" field on the edit form. A company becomes a Consultant when it has entries in its Consulting companies field. The companies on the receiving end automatically appear as Consulted in their own rows. The only way to change a company's type label is to modify the consulting relationship on the relevant record.

Heads up: Removing a company from the Consulting companies list does not revoke access immediately. The change only takes effect after you click Save. Until then, the existing relationship remains active.

Searching for a specific company

If your organisation has many registered entities, scrolling through the full list is impractical. Use the search bar instead.

• Click the search bar at the top of the table and start typing the company's name.
• The list filters in real time with each keystroke, showing only records whose names match your query.
• Once you have found the company, you can verify its country, type, and last-modified date directly from the table columns, or click its row to open the full record (edit permission required).
• Clear the search field to restore the complete list.

Reviewing the company registry as an auditor

If you have read-only access — enough to see the screen but not to open individual records — the Companies table still provides a useful audit snapshot.

The Type column tells you at a glance which companies act as consultants (Consultant) and which are on the receiving end of a consulting arrangement (Consulted). The Consulting companies column shows exactly which entities each consulting firm advises. You can sort by Name, Country, Created at, or Updated at to help organise your review. Because row navigation is silently disabled for read-only users, clicking a row will simply do nothing — this is by design, not a bug.

Field reference

Name — The display name of the company as it will appear across all of DPMS. Required; cannot be left blank. Must be unique within your DPMS instance.

Country — The country where the company is registered. Selected from a dropdown. Required, even though no value is pre-selected by default. Leaving this blank and attempting to save will produce a validation error.

Consulting companies — A multi-select field for linking this company to one or more other companies it will consult. Optional for standalone entities. When at least one value is selected, a yellow information banner appears explaining the access implications. Removing all selections clears the consulting relationship after saving.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

The Companies screen sits at the very foundation of the DPMS data model. Almost every other module depends on it.

Company switcher in the top navigation — Every time you save a new or updated company here, the company dropdown in the application header refreshes immediately for all users. This dropdown is how users switch their active context between legal entities, so keeping the company list accurate here has a direct effect on day-to-day navigation across the platform.

Compliance records — When creating a ROPA entry, an asset, a vendor record, a task, or a risk assessment anywhere else in DPMS, users select a company from a dropdown. That dropdown is populated from the records managed on this screen. If a required entity is missing, it must be added here first before records can be attributed to it.

Consulting company data access — The consulting relationship you configure here is a live access-control boundary. Once saved, users associated with a consulting firm will be able to see data belonging to the companies it has been configured to consult. Incorrectly configuring this relationship could expose compliance data to unintended parties, so review the yellow information banner carefully before saving.

After finishing here — Once you have registered all the companies your programme requires, you are ready to proceed with the rest of Compliance Settings and then start populating compliance records (ROPA, assets, vendors, risk assessments) in the relevant modules. Use the company switcher in the top navigation to switch between entities as you work.

Tips & common pitfalls

Heads up: If clicking rows in the table does nothing and no error appears, your account has read access but not edit access. This is intentional behaviour — DPMS silently disables row navigation rather than displaying an error. Ask your system administrator to grant edit access if you need to open records.

Tip: The Country dropdown has no pre-selected value, which makes it easy to overlook. Always select a country before clicking Save — the form will not submit without one, and the error toast ("Unable to create [object]") can be easy to miss.

• The Type column cannot be set directly. There is no "Type" field on the edit form. The Consultant or Consulted labels are derived automatically from the Consulting companies relationships across all records. If a company's type label is wrong, the fix is to review the consulting relationships on the relevant records.
• Changes to consulting relationships are not live until saved. If you remove a company from the Consulting companies field, that change only takes effect after you click Save. The old relationship remains active until then.
• New companies appear in the switcher immediately after saving, not before. If you are showing a colleague the new company record mid-form and they switch to another part of DPMS, the company will not yet appear in their dropdown. Complete the form and save first.
• The yellow consulting relationship banner is a confirmation, not a blocking error. It appears whenever at least one company is selected in the Consulting companies field. It includes the name you have entered (or a placeholder if the name field is empty) to help you confirm you are configuring the right entity. Read it every time — the access implications are significant.
• Infinite scroll loads records automatically as you scroll. You do not need to click any "load more" button. If a company you expected to see is not in the list, try using the search bar before assuming the record is missing — it may simply not have loaded yet.